a million

promises...

Sustainability

Sustainability at Maruti Suzuki refers to sum total of all the actions and initiatives
undertaken by the Company for its long-term survival and growth.
To achieve longterm sustainability and prosperity the Company has nurtured a
socially responsible behaviour towards its various stakeholders.

The Company is currently evolving a

comprehensive Sustainability Policy OUR STAKEHOLDERS
and Guidelines to ensure that while
working to enhance shareholder
wealth, interest of stakeholders
continues to act as a guide for Business
Partners
actions and decisions in the future
as well. Customers Shareholders
Investors

OUR CUSTOMERS Local

Community Environment
Sustainability begins with customers.
The Company has a robust customer Employees
feedback system through which it

100 Maruti Suzuki India Limited ANNUAL REPORT 2007-08


assesses the changing aspirations
and requirements of customers. Over
the past two decades, the Company
has been successful in bringing out
products that not just meet but
exceed customer's expectations.
The aspiration to give more for less to
the customers has given the
Company a competitive edge in
competitive times. The VA-VE
initiatives (Value Analysis & Value
Engineering) pursued aggressively by
the Company in partnership with
suppliers have helped the Company
reduce cost of making a car without
compromising on quality. Every year
the Company celebrates company
wide Quality Month awareness
programmes in association with its
suppliers. While VA-VE efforts
continue all through out the year, the
Company also observes a VA-VE
month every year, during which it is
able to create more awareness and
consciousness towards the cause.
A wide and deep service network
spread across the country has helped
Golden Peacock Award
For excellence in the field of
Environment Management
the Company reach customers not the Company to develop and install
only in metro cities but also in semi- an anti-theft device- the immobiliser
urban, Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities. system called i-CATS in all its new
cars, much before regulatory
In addition, the Company introduced requirement. The Company was first
many new initiatives such as car pick among all car manufacturers in the
& drop facility by service workshops country to offer this safety device in
for women car owners, Maruti Mobile compact cars.
Support to offer door step car
servicing, Express Service bays,
OUR PARTNERS - SUPPLIERS
special bays that can offer
In manufacturing where a sizeable
maintenance service in less than 2
percentage of inputs are bought from
hours, and so on.
vendors and suppliers, the ability to
continuously improve quality and
The Company has a stringent reduce costs is directly dependent on
customer complaint monitoring vendors doing the same.
system. Besides period syndicated
surveys, the Company systematically
In light of this statement, the
compiles customer feedback and
Company guides suppliers in adopting
ratings on a daily basis. The findings
latest technologies, and transfers its
are reported in the weekly
best practices in the areas of
Management Committee Meeting.
productivity improvement, quality
enhancement and cost reduction.
This has regularly led to
improvements in product quality,
The Company has set up Maruti
features, processes and customer
Centre for Excellence (MACE) in
interface. For example, feedback that
collaboration with some of its
Maruti Suzuki cars were more prone
suppliers to achieve these objectives.
to theft owing to high resale value led
SUSTAINABILITY 101
 a million
promises...

Sustainability Contd.
With the help of MACE, now the
Company is assisting its direct suppliers
in upgrading their sub-suppliers or (Tier-
2 suppliers).

Most of the suppliers and joint venture

companies are located near Company's
manufacturing facilities in Gurgaon and
Manesar, which are sensitive areas from
Industrial Relations perspective.

Therefore, the Company has identified

Industrial Relations and Human
Resource as two important areas of
interventions with suppliers. The HR
team of MSIL maintains very close
interaction with them on almost regular
basis.

OUR PARTNERS - DEALERS

The Company has been passionately
building its sales and service network
since its inception.
The Company has set up 16 Regional
Training Centres across the country to
continuously upgrade skills of dealer
employees as per new technologies and
customers' requirements.
In recent years, the Company has
conducted a comprehensive national
survey of its dealer employees to gauge
their level of satisfaction. By many
accounts, this is a rare initiative by any
principal company. Based on the results
of the survey, the Company formed a
cross functional team of senior
management from sales, network
development and HR to identify an
action plan to improve satisfaction
levels of dealer employees. One of the
initiatives, for instance, was providing
car loans at low rates of interest for
good performers with repayment
guarantee provided by the dealer.
SHAREHOLDERS AND INVESTORS
The Company has put in place a strong
mechanism for Corporate Governance to
enhance confidence of its large number
of shareholders and investors in the
Company. The Company complies
with all guidelines of SEBI, Stock
exchange, etc.
EMPLOYEES
The Company has enforced highly
conducive working environment for its
employees. MSIL does not support
favouritism in recruitment, promotion,
providing compensation, or
termination based on caste, religion,
gender or age. The Company offers
equal opportunity for growth to all
employees.
During the year, the Company
finalised its policy on affirmative
action as per the guidelines laid down
by Confederation of Indian Industries.
SAFETY POLICY
In March, the Company celebrated a
month long Safety Awareness Drive.
The drive aimed to sensitise
employees and their families towards
importance of safe working place,
safer homes and need for safer
traveling. The drive coincided with the
National Safety Month, and was led
by members of the top management.
The theme of this year's Safety Drive
was Hum sab ka ek hi sankalp,
suraksha pratham suraksha
pratham. (Together let us pledge
Safety First, Safety First).
Giving high priority to work place
safety, Maruti Suzuki firmly believes
that a plant designed to be safe is far
more productive than otherwise. In
light of this fact, the Company has
undertaken concerted initiatives to
eliminate work place mishaps, over
the last 25 years.
One of the most exciting exercise of
this annual drive is that the
employees themselves identify areas,
activities and operations that could
be unsafe or hazardous. Named as
Kekken Yuichi Training, the end result
of the exercise is that the employee
suggests

102 Maruti Suzuki India Limited ANNUAL REPORT 2007-08

measures that are appropriate to
make the work place hazard free. The
Company has a vigilant policy in place
that monitors issues of work place
safety on a weekly basis.
ENVIRONMENT
The Company has remained ahead of
regulatory requirements in pursuit of
environment protection and energy
conservation at its manufacturing
facilities, and in development of
products that use fewer natural
resources and are environment
friendly.
Total energy consumption at the
facilities has come down by 26
percent compared to the beginning of
the decade.
The Company credited the Just-in-
Time philosophy adopted and
internalised by the employees as the
prime reason that helped to excel in
this direction.
From the perspective of capacity
expansion, 2007-08 was one of the
busiest years for the Company.
The Company commissioned a new
plant for KB series engines at
Gurgaon facility and the annual
capacity of the Manesar plant was
enhanced from 100,000 units to
170,000 units during 2007-08.
Despite capacity enhancements the
Company closely monitored its power
and water consumption.
While power consumption was lower
by 30 percent and the Water
consumption stood 61 percent lower
that the levels of 2000-01.
The CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) emissions
per vehicle (produced during
manufacturing) are lower by 38
percent compared to 2000-01 levels.
ADOPTING ENERGY SAVING
TECHNOLOGIES
While the Company continues to
improve energy saving initiatives
through numerous Kaizens
(continuous improvements) on the
shop floor, the thrust on adopting
energy saving technologies has
increased phenomenally.
Three-coat-one-bake painting
system: The Company introduced the
three-coat-one-bake system at its
Manesar facilities.
In this state-of-the-art painting
system, three wet-on-wet coats are
applied and baked together.
Conventional painting systems use
two baking steps before the final
finish. This facilitates lower energy
consumption and yet improves the
productivity levels.
The green co-efficient of this system
is much better than that of the
conventional system.
SUSTAINABILITY 103
PRACTICING 3R (REDUCE, REUSE AND
RECYCLE)
The Company has been promoting 3R
since its inception. As a result the
Company has not only been able to
recycle 100% of treated waste water but
also reduced fresh water consumption
by 28%. The Company has implemented
rain water harvesting to recharge the
aquifers. Also, recyclable packing for
bought out components is being actively
promoted.
GREENING OF SUPPLY CHAIN
The Company has been facilitating
implementation of Environment
Management System (EMS) at its
suppliers' end. Regular training
programmes are conducted for all the
suppliers on EMS. Surveys are
conducted to assess the vendors who
need more guidance. The systems and
the environmental performance of
suppliers are audited.
COMMUNITY INITIATIVES
The Company works closely with local
communities around its manufacturing
facilities to improve their quality of life.
The Company has adopted four villages
surrounding its Manesar plant - Kasan,
Dhana, Alihar and Baas Kusla and
launched sustainable livelihood
programmes for under privileged
communities. The initiatives are focused
on four key areas: Health, Education,
Employment Generation through
Vocational Trainings & Basic
Infrastructure Development.
ROAD SAFETY
The Company has been playing a
leading role for many years now in
promoting road safety and safe driving
in the Country. The Company believes
that in addition to monetary support,
one of the best ways for corporates to
fulfill their social responsibility is by
offering their managerial skills to
society.
104 Maruti Suzuki India Limited ANNUAL REPORT 2007-08
In line with this, the Company Several other state governments,
manages two Institutes of Driving such as Haryana, Bihar, Uttarakhand,
Training & Research (IDTR) in Delhi Chattisgarh and West Bengal have
and Maruti Driving Schools across the also approached the Company to set
country. Through these facilities, the up driving training institutes in their
Company has brought international states. The Company has already
standards in driving training and signed an MoU with the Government
state-of-the-art training infrastructure of Haryana for setting up two driving
in the country. training institutes at Rohtak and
Bahadurgarh.
The first major step towards
promoting road safety was in the year MARUTI DRIVING SCHOOLS
2000 when Delhi Government invited The Company has also involved its
the Company to manage the Institute dealers across the Country in
of Driving Training and Research promoting road safety and safe
(IDTR) and start driving training
driving. In collaboration with them,
courses. The Company introduced the Company has set up 34 Maruti
training facilities and infrastructure
Driving Schools in 32 different
including world-class driving test locations across the Country. These
tracks, advanced computer
schools are equipped with world
simulators and training modules as class, state-of-the-art driving
per international standards at the
simulators and offer beginners as
institute, which is spread over an area well as refresher training
of 14.5 acres. Regular research in
programmes. Over 35,000 people
road safety and safe driving was also have been trained so far.
started at the Institute. In 2006, the
second IDTR was set up to promote
road safety by primarily targeting non-
commercial drivers and impart driving
training to them. This Institute is also
equipped with the same facilities and
infrastructure as made available in
the first IDTR.
SETTING UP GUJARATI
In a landmark move, the Company
signed an MoU with the Government
of Gujarat, to set up, manage and run
The Gujarat Regional Automobile
Training Institute ( to be referred as
GUJARATI) at Gajadara village of
Waghodia taluka in Vadodara district.
It is the first of its kind initiative in the
country. The Institute will not only
provide driving training to tribal youth,
it will also offer automobile technical
training to them and help their
employability.